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Monday, 20 February 2012

We've just had a very welcome half term break here. An excuse for some little day trips, a few jobs like the hanging of blinds and pictures started at least, and a little bit of study-o time for me. Things are beginning to change; I've liquidated a few boxes full of junk, piled things pell-mell on to the open bookcase, then spent ages lovingly folding fabric into neat rectangles and stacking them into my shiny new cupboards. My new billy bookcases from Ikea, with the addition of some lovely glass doors, are everything I dreamed of.

It's great finally to be able to see what I've got at a glance (though maybe less good that my husband is now aware of exactly how much fabric I've acquired), and the glass doors mean that everything stays dust-free. I'm all for the idea of the stacks of fabric as decoration too - it seems sad to hide them away in a cupboard.

I found a beautiful pendant lampshade in John Lewis which I'm pleased with beyond all measure. I do like the simplicity of the design and the cutwork shapes cast pretty shadows on the walls and hideous artexed ceiling.

So with a little more order in place, I've managed to crank up the sewing machine again. My sister is expecting her first baby next month, so another new nephew quilt is needed.

I do like a nice stack of rotary-cut squares, sitting so full of promise. The topmost fabric, Flower Fields from Joel Dewberry's Modern Meadow line, is one of my very favourites. The palette is built around the yellows, with the addition of a teal blue-green and a chocolate brown. There are birds and elephants from Cloud 9's organic range, and the remnants of a vintage floral cotton from which my sister and I had a dress made by my mother around 30 years ago. There's also the very last piece of a hoarded bird-print fabric (Summer in the City by Urban Chiks for Moda, one of those I really wished I'd bought more of), from which I eked out 3 whole birds.

I'm calling it birds and elephants in a field of flowers.

And I haven't been the only one who's been hard at work this half term. My children (partly due to my misreading of the submission date as this very Monday rather than Monday week) cracked on with their school Eisteddfod craft challenges. The brief for my girl in Juniors was to craft a lovespoon out of any material she chose, and the boy in the Infants was to make a Welsh dragon. We did think about cross stitch, papier mache, or some kind of cereal box sculpture, but in the end went for our tried and tested salt dough recipe.

Just for the record, super glue will not bond salt dough, so how lucky that I had a tube of my trusty gutermann fabric glue to hand which did the job perfectly.